Vito Foderà new Professor at IF
Vito Foderà has been appointed Professor here at Department of Pharmacy, where he has been a respected and highly regarded researcher for several years. Professor Vito Foderà is part of the research group Drug Delivery and Biophysics of Biopharmaceuticals. He is committed to research in proteins in neurodegenerative diseases, drug development and development of protein materials for drug delivery.
The new professor is involved in projects within three main research subjects. The first subject relates to the physics of proteins
in neurodegenerative diseases. Here, Professor Vito Foderà and his team focus on the understanding of protein-protein interactions leading to protein phase changes and solid transition into insoluble materials connected to Parkinson´s disease.
A second branch of research relates to protein and antibody aggregation in drug development, with the aim of creating safer drugs. Last, but not least, Professor Vito Foderà and his team aim at generating sustainable protein materials for drug delivery.
For the above activities, they use advanced biophysical experimental approaches, i.e. X-ray, imaging and UV-Vis spectroscopy, and theoretical modelling combined with electrospinning for material production, bio-assays and ex vivo experiments for the material evaluation.
Professor Vito Foderà describes his current activities:
“My team and I are leading many highly interdisciplinary projects involving collaborators from, among others, University of Cambridge (UK), Forschungzentrum Jülich (Germany), University of Palermo (Italy), and University of Copenhagen, the pharmaceutical industry and large scale facilities.
A recently funded project focuses on the establishment in the next 5 years of a synthetic biology platform (lab-in-a cell) for the study of protein phase separation, which can account for the complexity of cells in in vitro experiments. Parallel to this, we are creating materials using green chemistry, with the aim of improving drug delivery through skin and wound healing.
We are also involved in method development for antibody analysis via a project funded by Novo Nordisk A/S and for the characterization of drug formulations with Zerion Pharma.”